Wraith
Wraith is a terrible spectre that prficent archmages may summon to their will, but only for a short period of time. Is is essence of Death, like the elemental conterparts are to Eart, Fire, Water and Air, and has an affinity to Death Mana, again like the counterparts. }} |} Strategy A 10 Str summon unit, available to any Mage with Death 3 promotion. It lasts only 1 turn and is not very mobile, so it does not have overwhelming advantage. What makes Wraith fearful is the Death Mana affinity, that permits to greatly enhance the unit. With 4 Death mana available you have 8 new 13 Str Wraiths each turn, and your mages have automatic Death promotion and may concentrate on combat and mobility promotions. It is possible to concentrate all the strategy on these units, and build no military unit at all. Destroy Undead spell will mean nothing to you, because your summons will last 1 turn anyway, preventing only the use as a standard defence. Death mana is probably the strongest mana type overall (at least for military). Many spheres have excellent spells and summons, but Death is the only one that has a superb spell at Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III. The balancing factor for Death mana is that, for it to be effective, you NEED to hoard it, and that kills you diplomatically. A spectre is worse than a fireball unless you have at least 3 Death mana sources. Similarly, I'd rather have a Fire or Earth elemental than a Wraith, unless I have 3 death mana sources. But having that much Death mana means that almost everyone in the world hates you, making it hard to get resources and war allies. Finally, Death mana's fatal flaw is that it's quite ineffective against non-living units. Yeah, your wraiths might be Str 17 when they're attacking normal Longbowmen, but what do you do when Hyborem marches against you with a horde of Demons, or Basium with a horde of Angels (Angels have a 50% Death resistance), or even Beeri with a horde of Golems, and your wraiths are only Str 6 (and your spectres only Str 3) against them? Background During the Age of Dragons, the gods battled across creation. They fought over land and souls, until Dagda enforced the Compact. The Compact established rules for the relations between the angels, including providence over the souls of the living. When a person dies, regardless of race, his soul is brought to the vault of the deity he served in life, knowingly or not. But some people are bound too closely to their earthly life, and when they die they cannot leave this past life behind, lingering in echoes of memories. The loss of this precious life, the frustration of dreams that will never come to be darkens the heart of the spirit. These desires drag the soul into the Infernal Plains. The soul arrives in Hell, where nightmarish shades whisper to the soul, making him relive his darkest memories over and over. After some time, centuries in some cases, the mind and will of many fallen spirits are broken this way, some of these spirits vanish, while others are devoured by the whispering fiends and other animal-shaped Hungry Ghosts, spirits whose reason vanished and who exist only to satisfy their most primal desires. Some spirits survive the mind-shattering whispers and change: they become Spectres. Spectres are fallen spirits who recovered clear reason. Their appearance and personality are similar to what they had in life, and these will never change; the falling process galvanizes their soul to this shape. These spectres group themselves in hopeless communities to defend themselves from a highly hostile environment, but they keep the dreams and wishes they had in life, dreams and wishes whose realization is almost impossible in that hellish place. Dreams and wishes that don't go away, memories of the lost ones, that will to not disappear, nothing fades from the unchanging soul of the Spectre. During the Age of Magic, a Black Sea appeared by the shores of the razor-glass plain of Naraka. The sky in Hell is starless, but the waveless surface of the Black Sea reflected stars, stars that are not from Creation. Rumor spread that its waters were capable of making spectres lose their memories, dreams and wishes, of making one's self disappear. Many spectres, bored with their grey afterlife, pilgrimaged to the Black Sea, washing away their heart. But the dark waters don't wash away everything; a husk stays behind, a husk that is animated by ominous will. These beings are called Wraiths, a creature so unnatural that they are hated even by the fiends. After they are born on the shores of the Black Sea they float to a sinister tower in the middle of that sea, a windowless tower of infinite height, and no man knows what exists inside. Category:Undead Units Category:Units without a Unit Class Category:Unbuildable Units category:Summoned Units